Modern History

The Internet is changing life itself, and it's doing so rather quickly, and we all know this. But how is it changing...us? We speak with Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and the Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford.

On this presentation of ST, we welcome Karen Abbott, the bestselling author of "Sin in the Second City" and other books, whom USA Today has called a "pioneer of sizzle history." Abbott joins us by phone to talk about her newest volume, which tells the strange-but-true stories of four different women who risked everything to become spies, combatants, or informants during the Civil War. The book is "Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War," and it's just out from Harper.

On this installment of ST, we speak with the award-winning Canadian actor, playwright, and humorist Rick Miller, who will present his one-man show, "Boom," on Saturday the 20th at 7:30pm at the Tulsa PAC's Williams Theatre. As Miller tells us by phone, his 100-minute production offers a sweeping, fascinating, and maybe even educational exploration of the Baby Boomer generation -- from Che Guevara to Janis Joplin, from Buddy Holly to Nikita Khrushchev, and from Walter Cronkite to Martin Luther King, Jr.

On this edition of our program, we're pleased to speak with the distinguished orchestra conductor, scholar, and educator Leon Botstein, who has been the president of Bard College since 1975. Botstein will deliver the annual Frank Memorial Lecture in Judaism and Contemporary Issues here in Tulsa on Sunday the 7th at 7:30pm.

The Univeristy of Tulsa's free-to-the-public Presidential Lecture Series, sponsored by the Darcy O'Brien Endowed Chair, will soon get underway here on the TU campus. The first lecture in this annual series, scheduled for tomorrow night (Wednesday the 3rd) at 7:30pm at the Donald W. Reynolds Center, will feature the acclaimed author and journalist Charles C. Mann, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, The Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere.

On this edition of ST, we listen back to an interview that we did in April with the novelist and essayist Ayelet Waldman (whose books include "Red Hook Road," "Love and Other Impossible Pursuits," "Daughter's Keeper," and "Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes"). Waldman spoke with us about her then-new novel, "Love and Treasure," which has been thus summarized in Booklist: "Classics scholar Jack Wiseman, in the last throes of pancreatic cancer, entrusts an enamel locket to his granddaughter, imploring her to find the rightful owner. It's the only thing he's ever asked of her.

The "Rediscover Gilcrease" weekend -- a two-day, free-to-the-public gala happening at the museum on September 6th and 7th -- will feature unique attractions, special activities, and lots of family-friendly entertainment. Among the highlights, without question, will be the official opening of the striking new Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease. Several different lectures and presentations will be presented at the Helmerich Center, and one of them will be given by our guest today. Our guest is Brian Hosmer, the H.G.

Fifty years ago, in 1964 -- during what would come to be called Freedom Summer in the American South -- a young photographer named Matt Herron, who'd recently relocated to Mississippi from the North (with his wife and kids) in order to work on civil rights issues while also shooting photo-stories for Life, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post, put together a group of talented photographers that was known as the Southern Documentary Project.

On this edition of ST, we're discussing a special exhibit that's set to open at the Philbrook Museum of Art here in Tulsa over the weekend. Indeed, it's Philbrook's first-ever exhibition of works by Claude Monet (1840-1926), the widely admired and highly influential Fresh Impressionist. "Monet and the Seine: Impressions of a River" opens on Sunday the 29th and runs through September 21, 2014.

(Please note: This show first aired earlier this year.) On this edition of ST, we speak with Craig Nelson --- who's written for Vanity Fair, Salon, Popular Science, and other periodicals, and who's the bestselling author of "Rocket Men" as well as a biography of Thomas Paine --- about his newest book, which is an engrossing cultural history of the Atomic Age. "The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era" is, as was noted by Kirkus Reviews, "no impersonal 'march of science' story.